Afsun Qureshi: Mohamed Merah was not a jihadist. Just a mass-murdering nutjob

Mohamed Merah was not a jihadist. Just a mass-murdering nutjob

By Afsun Qureshi

Iwish people would stop calling Mohamed Merah a jihadist. He was a garden-variety serial killer in the same vein as Anders Breivik, Paul Bernardo or Clifford Olsen. Merah’s lawyer says he was autistic. And he probably was a psychopath as well. We certainly know that this supposed soldier of al-Qaeda was no Einstein: Two of his victims were Muslim.

As a Muslim, I get asked a lot about Surah (9:5), which instructs Muslims to kill the infidels (or, if you prefer, “slay the idolaters”), which is what Merah was hell bent on doing. My answer is: context. Read the Koranic paragraphs before and after to understand the full meaning. (The section describes what to do during an ongoing state of conflict.) Context also means understanding that the Koran was written some 1,400 years ago, and a couple of things have happened since.

Devout Muslims don’t kill children or off-duty soldiers. What real Muslims do is follow Sura 17:33: “And slay not the life which Allah hath forbidden save with right. Whoso is slain wrongfully, We have given power unto his heir, but let him not commit excess in slaying. Lo! He will he helped.”

One of the great problems of being a Muslim these days is the fallout when some nutcase, or a group of them, commit acts of murder, terror or genocide, then cower behind the shield of religion. The Shafia’s, Mehar and al-Qaeda fall into this category. The result is that the entire Muslim community is punished.

This is not limited to Muslims. Bernie Madoff gave international Jewry a rough run, and the Dutch Catholic Church castrating children made innocent Catholics a target of scorn.

Quite rightly then, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly denounced Mehar’s deluded attempt to link his crimes to solidarity with Palestinians: “It is time for these criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions, and to stop pretending to stand up for Palestinian children, who only seek a decent life for themselves and for all children of the world. This terrorist crime is condemned in the strongest terms by the Palestinian people and our children … no Palestinian child can accept crimes against innocent people.”

In literature, descent into madness is usually preceded by obsession. Look no further than Moby Dick’s revenge-seeking Ahab as an example. Merah’s obsession came straight from the darkest recess of his diseased mind, and the result is that people such as Marine le Pen, the head of France’s ultra-right-wing Front National, will use it as ammunition to try to eject immigrants. Algerians have always had it rough in France, but now it will get worse. The French elections are in May, and Sarkozy is urging Muslims not to feel stigmatized — but easier said than done.

The endless cycle of hate begetting hate has just geared up a couple notches. And as usual, the innocent suffer.